Christmas and the challenge of inequality

Church Action on Poverty
As church leaders prepare their sermons and talks for Christmas, Church Action on Poverty is encouraging them to reflect on what the Christmas story tells us about poverty and inequality.
David Price, the chair of our local group in Sheffield, has written this special briefing, which we have sent to many of the [...]

Cardinal tells Food Summit: ‘Africa needs water, not GM crops’ Posted

Independent Catholic News
At the Rome Food Summit which opened yesterday,  Cardinal Napier, Archbishop of Durban, said: “I have the impression that this organization does not know what the real problems of nutrition in Africa are. Africans do not need GMOs (genetically modified organisms), but water. We have our crops that grow well without genetic modifications, [...]

Farmers Not Invited to Food Summit?

InterPress Service
by Sabina Zaccaro
ROME – World farmers are not part of the official delegations at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food summit on food security that opened here Monday. But they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis.
Small-scale producers from [...]

Poverty, Global Trade Justice, and the Roots of Terrorism

Yes Magazine
To combat terrorism, we should address the root causes of poverty, says former “economic hit man”
by John Perkins
The following is adapted from Hoodwinked: An Economic Hitman Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them. Random House, 2009:
Navy Seal snipers rescued an American cargo ship captain unharmed and [...]

A Call to Integrate Faith, Ecology and the Global Economy

To Endorse the following statement contact: Kmcneely@maryknoll.org

As hope-filled people, we stand in awe of Earth’s goodness and its capacity to provide abundant life for all God’s creation. We recognize our interconnection with Earth — with air, water, land, plants and other creatures. We recognize the dignity of the human person as an individual and [...]

Corporate investors lead the rush for control over overseas farmland

GRAIN, October 2009
This table accompanies this article
With all the talk about “food security,” and distorted media statements like “South Korea leases half of Madagascar’s land,” it may not be evident to a lot of people that the lead actors in today’s global land grab for overseas food production are not countries or governments but corporations. [...]

Time to close down the investment companies that feed off the living

New Internationalist

Conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the latest poor country to fall foul of a type of investment company called a ‘vulture fund’. It is being charged $20,000 a week – which will eventually rise to $80,000 – by a Washington DC court. The charges are adding to DRC’s already unpayable debt burden [...]

Rep. Marcy Kaptur & Simon Johnson: Is Opportunity for Real Financial Reform Already Gone?

Bill Moyers Journal
Just over a year after economic calamity brought promises of reform from Washington, has Wall Street really changed? Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson and US Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) report on the state of the economy.

Dwindling Fish Catch Could Leave a Billion Hungry

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 9 (IPS) – Fish catches are expected to decline dramatically in the world’s tropical regions because of climate change, but may increase in the north, said a new study published Thursday.
This mega-shift in ocean productivity from south to north over the next three to four decades will leave those most [...]

The Demise of the Dollar

The Independent
by Robert Fisk
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency [...]